Friendship. 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 32:1-3a. 6-15; I Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16: The Rev. Dr. Timothy C. Ahrens Senior Minister

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1 Friendship 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time Jeremiah 32:1-3a. 6-15; I Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16:19-31 The Rev. Dr. Timothy C. Ahrens Senior Minister September 25, 2016 From the Pulpit The First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ 444 East Broad Street, Columbus, OH Phone: Fax: home@first-church.org Website:

2 A sermon delivered by The Rev. Dr. Timothy C. Ahrens, Sr. Minister, The First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Columbus, Ohio, September 25, 2016, Legacy Sunday, the 164 th Anniversary of our Congregation, dedicated to the Senior and Associate Ministers of First Church, to all the staff members through all the generations, to all the moderators, lay leaders and to all the members of our congregation through all the years, to my son Daniel Robert Sitler Ahrens who turns 26 on the 26 th and always to the glory of God! Jeremiah 32:1-3a,6-15; I Timothy 6:6-19; Luke 16: Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of each one of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our salvation. Amen s scripture passages speak to us of buying and selling, the nature of material possessions and the value of true faith and true riches. Jeremiah speaks of buying land in a time of economic depression and war as an act of faith and an investment in hope. I Timothy speaks of greed in the Christian community that leads people away from faith and into the infliction of grief a t-take-itwith- other

3 than Father Abraham. Ultimately, all three passages have to do with friendship and relationships or the lack thereof. s jump into Jeremiah 32. The year is 587 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has his armies laying siege to city of Jerusalem. The armie s inhabitants and force corrupt King Zedekiah to surrender. Zedekiah calls upon his prophet Jeremiah to pronounce a word of hope. earlier, the army marched north out of Egypt and saved the day. This time, Jeremiah simply say For speaking truth to power, Zedekiah puts the prophet in prison one last time (You see Jerry has been jailed before for speaking the truth). With his prophet behind bars, the King decides to start relating to God and cries out, He wants to k Why does Jeremiah say these things? Why does the prophet threaten the king? If the king had been listening to the prophet, he would know His corruption has created his downfall. Now, only silence accompanies cries of Why? While God ignores the whining king, Jeremiah is listening to his poor cousin Hanamel, who begs him to buy their s ancestral home and farm in Anathoth, a village just north of the Jerusalem wall. Today, Anathoth would be located on the high ground around The King David Hotel and the

4 YMCA in ce t touch this land t this time coming from all of us the faithful listeners! We think there is absolutely no benefit to the imprisoned, soon to be deported or beheaded Moreover, why would anyone buy land in a time of economic depression and war? Why, when the city is soon to fall and Anathoth will be in the possession of the Babylonians s plot? weeping prophet says nothing. Instead, his actions become his answer. In other words, his actions speak louder than words. Jeremiah simply weighs out the money 17 shekels of silver. He sets out the terms and conditions for purchase. Then, in the presence of Baruch, cousin Hamamel, and witnesses who sign the deed of purchase, in the presence of Judeans who can see, and hear, and smell, and taste the Babylonian assault, Jeremiah buys the family farm. In the end, it is God who swirling around this text. Jeremiah 32:15 records, -of-the-angel-armies, the God of Israel Homes and fields, and vineyards are again going to be bo (The Message translation). translated from the Hebrew mean the econo

5 Destruction and judgment are s final word. Restoration, mercy, salvation and hope s final words. Life returning to normal is the sign of s economy. By his prophetic actions, Jeremiah teaches us to live into the belief that, faith He teaches us that true riches are discovered by faithful action. He teaches us that matching our investments in dreams coupled with our faith claims is the way to boldly buy into the future, even in the darkest times. In fact, it is exactly in the prophet s darkest hour that faith and future development inspired by investments come together and find meaning. We know the specifics of land acquisition by reading the prophet blueprint in Jeremiah 32. Every Biblically grounded real estate broker should know this story. In each generation, God blesses us with men and women whose prophetic faith claims match their economic investments in future hope! The Bible s brashness on themes of wealth and material s first letter to Timothy. Throughout the letter, the apostle has been laying boundaries around the Christian faith. He has been trying to give structure and form to how we live as Christians. As the letter comes to the end, Paul focuses on the ultimate folly of collecting wealth. Aware that a growing number of first Century Christians are

6 hoarding the wealth that they accumulate (some things never change) he writes to Timothy, it is the rich simplicity of being yourself before God. Since we entered the world penniless and will leave it penniless, if we have bread on the ta The Message). He To live for money brings trouble and nothing but trouble. Going down that path some lose their footing of faith and live to regret it bitterly ever Paul implores Timothy to away from attitudes that cling to money and lose track of righteousness and eternal life. He tells his friend (and each of us), righteous life a life of wonder, faith, love, steadiness, and courtesy. Run hard and fast into this faith. Seize the eternal life you were called to (I Timothy 6: 11-12). Paul finishes his letter with a return to addressing Christians who have wealth (and from my ministry in poor neighborhoods of Columbus and travels across this planet I would say that is all of us). Paul writes,, s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with their money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God who piles on all the riches we could ever manage to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they will build a treasury that will last, gaining eternal life life that is truly life (I Timothy 6:17-19).

7 Why keeping us from understanding that true wealth comes from relationships with God and our fellow human beings? True wealth comes from friendship. arries over into L s Gospel parable about the rich man, Lazarus, and Father Abraham! Lazarus never speaks in this story. His silence speaks volumes. As a poor man, Lazarus hovers the rich man - whose name we never know. best friends, the street dogs, lick his open sores, he eats s table. Please allow your mind to visualize this scene for a moment. This is a child of God a human being - eating scraps under a table. And there he dies in this dreadful condition. Angels carry him to heaven and place him beside Father Abraham. The rich man dies and goes to hell. The tables are turned. Now he is eating scraps from under will). From the torment of hell, he sees Lazarus (probably for the first time!) sitting in heaven on the lap of Abraham. So, now the dead rich man calls out to Abraham to have mercy upon him. tongue from fires of torment with just a dip o Abraham is kind and clear, You had your chance in life to make different choices. Now the chasm between heaven and hell is so

8 great that no one can traverse it. Nor can anyone cross over from ork. So the rich man changes his approach. Since he cannot be saved from eternal torment, he begs Father Abraham to send Lazarus back to warn his five brothers of their future fate (you see this is a family of Narcissistic rich men). They have Moses and the Prophets (like Jeremiah). Let them listen to the law of Moses and the prophets of God. That is all they need. So the tormented rich man responds, t listening to the Word of God or his prophets! But, if someone came back from the dead, they would sit Looking with love at Lazarus, Abraham shouts back from heaven, listen to Moses and the prophets, they are not going to be convinced simply by someone Note that Jesus gives us a foreshadowing But, here the story ends. I feel like these texts are looking us all in the eyes and speaking directly to us. From a prison cell with his city under siege, a prophet buys the farm; in a letter about what really matters, another prophet (Paul) says it is about relationships with God and other people not about hoarding money and from heaven shouting to hell, Father Abraham says wake up and pay attention be

9 If we have been sleepwalking in matters of money and faith, compassion and serving others, the meaning of life and eternal life, friendship, loyalty and love - our texts today wake us up to the meaning of true faith and true riches. do it I feel like God gave us these texts today as a wake-up call on our 164 th Birthday. I feel like God is calling you and me to invest our lives and resources in the present and future ministry and mission of this place through which God has blessed generations of faithful followers. We all have lots of excuses as t stretch ourselves in this time and place to invest our time, talents and treasures in the present and future ministry and mission of First Church. After almost 17 years, I have heard most of the excuses. And I have come up with some you never even thought of. But, then, I read the words of Jeremiah, Paul and Jesus. The word of God trumps the vanity of this pastor and all your vanities and our poor excuses vaporize around us in this cathedral of grace, this house built for justice. You know I love to talk about the abolitionists of First Church (and you are saying too the sermon!). But will our children, and children down through the ages love to talk about us and about this time and what we did here? Our choices for our legacy have been painted with a large brush st s biblical

10 narratives. What I love about the puzzle pieces that lay leaders and staff have created and placed all around the church is that each one has an item on it but behind each item there is a name of a person or people who invested in this church and thus created a legacy of love here. Their love for this congregation is deeply rooted in friendship and loyalty. They are our friends and in some cases our family but in all cases our church family. Some of their names are not known to us like the people who anonymously established our Good Samaritan Fund and our Major Projects fund which annually brings $25,000 from the Columbus Foundation to work on creative and much needed major projects of the church. Others, I never met. There are amazing women of faith - Alma Keeler, Lucetta G. Gearhart, Celia Jeffery, Jackie Owen and Jean MacNevin. These amazing women established legacies of love here for education, music, and social justice. the Knights or the Perrys, but their gifts have helped some of you through tough times. All of them are family to me and you because they left a legacy of love so that we could worship here and more completely serve of our neighbors here. I was honored to work beside Dorinda White and I am deeply thankful that Keith White lovingly established an education fund in her name dedicated to passion for the children of this church. Alan Wingfield was an amazing and creative man and Twink Starr established a fund in the name

11 of his beloved. Jane Werum gave a gift for the stained glass window in the narthex dedicated to honor G. Dene Barnard and his amazing ministry of thirty years as our Choirmaster and Organist. Sam Gordon was in worship every Sunday in his wheelchair at both services. Some of our children brought him coffee and sweets at 9a.m. Other children embraced him and served him at coffee hour after the 11a.m. service. A man who had so little saved so well and because of his amazing gift of $121, % of his estate s playground and a fund to care for it for years to come. Who here knew that Sam had investments near half a million dollars? Thanks be to God for our friends who have shared gifts in love. In the past year Bill and Gail Johannes established a landscape fund to care for our grounds and keep the church beautiful outside to inside. Sheldon and Becky Taft established a Stewardship Continuity Fund to help us maintain and grow Thank you! The list goes on from our two sanctuary organs, to all our stained glass windows to our glorious banner hanging art and up to this week when we received a challenge gift to restore the John Firebaugh and matched by Gail and Bill Johannes. (Do I hear a Hurray from all the women?). Then the great surprise

12 of June a huge gift to create Gladden Park on the south side of Broad Street in our West Lot. It will be a social justice witness with beautiful trees and art that will accentuate the beauty of this beautiful church we call home and honor the name of our greatest pastor and leader of the social gospel movement, The Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden. This coming from a family that has loved and lifted up our church for over 130 years. We are so blessed with such great friends and family. In significant ways, each one of the men and women just named have been friends to us as they have helped build our legacy of love in the heart of our capitol city. Near the end of his life, Dr. Gladden wrote these words in his autobiography, Recollections (circa 1909): (And here is the sum of all I have learned) I am fain to believe that the time is drawing near when the Christian Church will be able to discern and declare the simple truth that religion is nothing but Friendship, friendship with God and with all people. I have been thinking about it in these last days, and I cannot make anything else, so far as I can see it, this is all there is to it. Religion is Friendship - friendship first with the Great Companion, of whom Jesus told us, is always nearer to us than we are to ourselves, and whose inspiration and help us the greatest fact of human experience.

13 suggestions, to be in conscious fellowship with Him - this is religion on its Godward side. Then, turning manward, friendship sums it all up. To be friends with everybody, to fill every human relation with the spirit of friendship, is there anything more than this, that the wisest and best of Men (and women) can hope to do? Friendship. If King Zadekiah had seen Jeremiah as a friend speaking truth with love and if the rich man had befriended Lazarus instead of treating him like dirt, the true riches of life and faith would have become self-evident to both and to us as well. Simply stated, the world needs THIS church to be a shining witness for an inclusive, tolerant, loving, grace-filled and friendship rich Christian faith in the heart of Columbus, Ohio. God needs us to be strong and growing. So please breathe deeply the words of Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus. And when you exhale, may you breathe out and share an extravagant generosity and a vibrant response of faith you never imagined possible. Amen. Copyright 2016, First Congregational Church, UCC